Yiddish cinema
Yiddish film almost disappeared after World War II, due to the Holocaust and the linguistic acculturation of Jewish immigrants, though new pictures are still made sporadically.
In September 1911, at the Minsk Electric Theatre, a Jewish troupe led by A.M. Smolarsky accompanied a short projection of silent motion pictures with the Yiddish song A Brivele der Mamen (Letter to Mother).
The most notable producer was the Warsaw-based Mordka Towbin, whose studio Siła released four short features adapted from the plays of Jacob Gordin within the year: Der Vilder Foter ("Cruel Father"), with Zina Goldstein and Ester Rachel Kaminska, directed by Marek Arnstein; der Metoiref ("The Madman"); Got, mentsh un tayvl ("God, Man and Satan"); and Mirele Efros.
In total, including several ones meted out in Russia, some 20 silent court métrage pictures with Yiddish titles were made before the end of World War I.
Sidney M. Goldin, born in Odessa as Shmuel Goldstein, directed several films in America before moving to Vienna in the early 1920s and trying his luck with Yiddish.
He produced two films: the 1923 Mazel Tov, starring Molly Picon in a comedy of errors about a young American visiting her traditional family in Galicia; and the 1924 Yizkor, with Maurice Schwartz as a Jewish guardsman who rebuffs a Christian noblewoman.
[3] In independent Poland, executive Leo Forbert was responsible for three silent Yiddish features which did well at the box office: Tkies Khaf (1924), based on S. Ansky's play The Dybbuk, Der Lamed-Wownik (1925), set in the 1863 January Uprising, and In di Poylishe Velder (1927).
In May 1929 they completed East Side Sadie, which had a few scenes with synchronized dialogue: J. Hoberman noted that in fact, it "contained scarcely more Yiddish than the few words heard in The Younger Generation".
He found new investors and, in 1931, spent $20,000 on making the musical Zayn Vayb's Liubovnik ("His Own Wife's Lover"), the first full-length sound feature film in the language.
Convinced there was a large enough market, producer Roman Rebush hired director Edgar G. Ulmer to adapt Peretz Hirschbein's play Green Fields.
Hirschbein's piece depicted a scholarly, melancholic yeshiva bokhr (student) who leaves the study hall to meet "real Jews" and falls in love with a peasant's daughter whom he secretly tutors in Hebrew.
While not paralleling the sales of Yiddle or Green Fields,[14] it is considered by most critics as the highest quality and most artistically accomplished production in the history of Yiddish cinema.
Tevya, starring Schwartz as Sholem Aleichem's milkman, had a particularly high budget of $70,000 and a dark, contemplative plot, unlike most Yiddish productions which were popular melodramas.
1940 still saw the completion of six pictures in the United States, including Ulmer's Amerikaner Shadkhn ("American Matchmaker") and Der Vilner Balabesl ("Overture to Glory") starring Moishe Oysher.
In 1947 and 1948 Kinor released two full-length films, Mir Leben Geblibene ("We Who Remained Alive") and Unzere Kinder ("Our Children"), directed by Nathan Gross.
[23] Joseph Seiden recalled that the few remaining filmmakers had high hopes about a market in the newly independent Israel,[24] but the state, and more so society, enforced a Hebrew-only approach.
While official censorship was mild, Yiddish culture was still severely frowned upon and sometimes even legally persecuted; Dzigan and Shumacher had to introduce Hebrew parts into their shows to avoid complications.
